Elicit

Elicit is an AI research platform built specifically for scientific and academic work, helping researchers search, screen, and synthesize evidence from millions of papers. The tool is developed by Elicit, Inc. and is actively used across pharmaceuticals, academia, medical devices, policy, and consumer goods sectors. According to the vendor, it is trusted by over 5 million researchers.

What It Is

Elicit is a web-based AI tool for scientific research that goes beyond simple chat interfaces to provide structured, multi-step research workflows. It searches over 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials using semantic search, generates structured research reports with sentence-level citations, and automates the screening and data extraction steps of systematic literature reviews. The platform is designed to help researchers be more evidence-based and efficient, with the vendor claiming up to 80% time savings for systematic review workflows.

Core Capabilities

Elicit's feature set covers the full research lifecycle:

• Search: Semantic search across 138M+ academic papers and 545,000+ clinical trials (via ClinicalTrials.gov), with keyword search also supported over PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov.
• Research Reports: AI-generated research briefs inspired by systematic review methodology, customizable by paper selection and extracted information, supporting up to 80 papers per report.
• Systematic Literature Review: Automated screening and data extraction with PRISMA 2020 guideline support; the vendor reports 95% search recall, 97% abstract screening accuracy, 99% full-text screening accuracy, and 96% extraction accuracy across 994 Cochrane reviews.
• Library: Storage and organization of sources for reuse across projects.
• Alerts: Monitoring for new research matching saved queries, delivered without inbox clutter.
• Research Agents: Agentic workflows for competitive landscapes, research landscape mapping, and broad topic exploration.
• API: Programmatic access to paper search and report generation, launched in March 2026.

Accuracy and Transparency Model

Elicit positions accuracy and transparency as core differentiators. Every AI-generated claim is supported by sentence-level citations from underlying sources. The vendor has published evaluation results: in a case study with VDI/VDE, Elicit correctly extracted 1,502 out of 1,511 data points (99.4% accuracy) for a systematic review informing German education policy. Formation Bio used Elicit to extract data from 1,600 papers, reporting a 10x speed improvement. Oxford PharmaGenesis, which the vendor states advises 8 of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies, uses Elicit to deliver literature reviews at scale across 500 papers and 40 research questions.

Industries and Audience

Elicit targets professional and institutional researchers across several verticals:

• Pharmaceuticals: Accelerating drug development evidence synthesis
• Academia: Supporting systematic reviews and literature surveys
• Medical devices & technology: Evidence gathering for product safety and efficacy
• Policy & government: Evidence-based policy research
• Consumer goods: Product research and ingredient/formulation evidence
• Industrials and Software/Technology: Materials discovery and algorithmic research

Update: PRISMA 2020 Support and API Launch (2026)

As of May 2026, Elicit's Systematic Review workflow now supports PRISMA 2020 guidelines, making the process reproducible, traceable, and auditable at every step. The Elicit API launched in March 2026, enabling programmatic access to the 138M+ paper database and report generation. Earlier releases include strict screening criteria and 80-paper reports (December 2025), Research Agents for broad topic exploration (December 2025), and Clinical Trials integration (July 2025). The product is under active development with frequent feature releases.